r 



ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BY 



/ 

Judge Ai\thur Mac Arthur, 



AT THE 



NINTH ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT, 



OF THE 



WASHINGTON NORMAL SCHOOL, 

For the (District of Columbia, 
JUNE 9, 1882. 



WASHINGTON : 

• 1882. 



ADDRESS 



Ladies and Gentlemen : 

These young ladies have completed the course of studies 
prescribed in the Washington Normal School, and are en- 
titled to receive the certificate awarded to all those who 
have passed the test of a satisfactory examination. They 
have been specially trained in the science of teaching, 
and will find employment at once to instruct the various 
grades in the public schools of the District. We have 
assembled this evening to honor their diligence, to wit- 
ness the delivery of their certificates, and to bid them 
God-speed in the highly useful career to which thej' have 
devoted so much of their future life. 

The Normal School is a revolution in the science of 
pedagogies. It is the revolution of our century. The 
art b}' which the teacher himself is taught successfully the 
principles and rules which pertain to the instruction of 
the young, is a new thing and one of the most important 
innovations upon the old regime of primary education. 
Under a very modest name we have a grand and fruitful 
institution for the professional training in the theory and 
practice of school education. A baker or a shoemaker 
had to learn his trade by an apprenticeship of several 
years before he could practice it ; but no preparation was 
expected of the schoolmaster. He entered the schoolroom 
relying upon main strength and a good birch rod to carry 
him through the stern struggle of experience. I remember 
the unique type of the ancient pedagogue well. He used 
to give me a dose of physical education most every day. 
and I can assure you it made a most unfavorable im- 
pression upon me. It improved neither my temper nor 
my mind. 

We can recall the graphic description of the school- 



master in Old Mortality, by Sir Walter Scott, who 
stunned with the noise and suffocated with the closeness 
of his schoolroom, has spent the whole day in controlling 
petulance, exciting indifference to action, striving to en- 
lighten stupidity, and laboring to soften obstinacy; and 
whose very powers of intellect have been confounded by 
hearing the same dull lesson repeated a hundred times by 
rote, and only varied by the various blunders of the 
reciters. 

This is changed. The unique pedagogue with his errors 
and his punishments, however picturesque as an object of 
the imagination, has passed away, and the rote system 'm 
buried in the same grave with him who taught it. Peace 
to their ashes ! And the dosimatic mode of teachino: is 
rapidly falling into disuse. Instead of drilling the pupils 
in abstract rules, which were not understood, every 
process of imparting information is now addressed to the 
understanding. Instead of the rote system, that of 
Ollendorff", which teaches a foreign language by the steps 
through which children pick up their own, has been advan- 
tageously resorted to. I am not familiar with what is 
going on in our schools, as I have no opportunity of visit- 
ing them ; but I understand the pupils are not required so 
much to commit rules to memory. For instance, in study- 
ing mathematics the powers and relations of numbers are 
investigated, from which mere rules result. Even the 
multiplication table, a conundrum upon which I was not 
very sound, has given way to the method of repeated ad- 
ditions to form a product ; and abstract propositions in 
elementary geometry have been superceded by examples 
or object lessons which embrace an observation of the 
reality of things. 

It not unfrequently occurs that the definitions a cMld 
has been taught to repeat with the utmost precision have 
no meaning to his reason until he ascertains what are the 
relations of real things in after life. A school boy 

2lr '03 



was asked to state tlie names of the four seasons, 
to which he replied: "Pepper, mustard, whiskej- and 
tomato catsup." The question did not fall within the 
detinition of his lesson upon the changes in the year, and 
he answered according to the articles with which he 
seasoned his food at home. 

What impressions, for instance, used to be more hazy 
and vague than those conveyed to the pupil's mind by 
geographical facts. He coukl define estuaries and islands, 
and isthmuses and the height of mountains ; but his 
conclusions were all at sea. His thinking powers were 
never called into exercise. An English gentleman trav- 
elling on horseback in the country, was accosted by a 
boy, who offered to tell him all the capitals in Europe 
for a penny. When he had done, the gentleman replied: 
"Here's your penny; and I will give you another if you 
will tell me whether they are animals or vegetables." 
" Animals," replied the bo\' promptly. It was not 
until quite lately that a model of the earth's surface was 
introduced large enough to compare its different features 
in tangible, palpable proportions, a mere look at which 
will convey more accurate information than was acquired 
by years of study under the exploded systems of my 
school-days. Indeed there are many intelligences more 
practiced than a child's to which an exhibition of minia- 
ture cliffs and forests, cataracts and mountain ranges, of 
zones and lofty peaks, would convey delightful con- 
ceptions. 

The same improvement in the practice of teaching 
grammar is observable. The sj^stem of learning a series 
of incomprehensible rules and definitions is not forced 
upon the pupil until, in some measure, the study will coin- 
cide with the expansion of his mind. Unless quite above 
the average intelligence of a child he was sure to stick 
fast in the conjugation of the verb, and to pnzzle himself 
into disgust at the distinction between a participle and an 



4 

adjective ; and when he got entangled among the conjunc- 
tions, adverbs and prepositions, he mixed them up like the 
little children in Pinafore. The parts of speech were often 
tauu^ht before the student could understand the meaning of 
words, and he was required to parse before he was able to 
master the interpretation of the sentence. The vices of 
the forcing or rote system were more irrational in this than, 
perhaps, in any branch of instruction. The study is now, I 
hope, conducted more in relation to the condition of the 
pupil's mind; that is, gradually, until it can be taken into 
the confidence as well as the intelligence of the child; or at 
least postponed until he can understand it ; for it is 
eternally true, that education is alone easy and efficient 
by conforming to the simple conditions of the intellect. 
Indeed, the mind of the child was treated very much like 
its body. Not many years ago it was the established 
practice to pour so nauseating a compound down a child's 
throat the instant it came upon earth, that one might sup- 
pose it would never get rid of the taste until it went out 
of the world again. The mother who first discarded the 
armour of swaddling clothes for her babe, was suspected of 
meditating infanticide. So similarly, when old enough to 
attend school, the mind was stuifed with rules until it 
recoiled from the prolonged monotony of the rote system 
lessons which it did not and could not comprehend. The 
propulsion of thought has now taken a more just and 
rational direction. 

A child a dozen years old remembers the rules which 
are taught him, and although he may not comprehend 
them, the mere conmiitting them to memory is a conquest 
in which he takes some pride. Two or three years later 
his mind grows weary of mere formula and requires some- 
thing more attractive. He becomes interested in things, 
in ideas and sentiments. But teaching remained per- 
fectly indifferent to all these glowing transformations of 
the mind. Instruction continued to be addressed to the 



memory instead of the intelliccence. Normal tcacliing 
recognizes the slow preparations by which mental percep- 
tions are formed in children, and changes its programme 
to secure their attention, to excite their curiosity and to 
inform and expand all the manifestations of the mind in 
passing through the difterent grades of public instruction. 

The education of our girls was still worse than that of 
the boys, and was carried on b}' an extravagant want of 
common sense; especialh' in what were called fashionable 
boarding schools. Many a fair and lovely girl has fallen 
a victim to the ignorance and pride of her parents, who 
deprived their daughters of youthful sports that they 
might grow up with a fragile, delicate exterior ; and 
teachers have kept them sitting when they ought to have 
been playing, that they might acquire ladylike tastes and 
flat chests. The boy who carries oft' the prizes at the 
English universities and in our colleges, frequently excel 
in handling an oar or a bat, or in some other out-door ex- 
ercise. Nothing of the kind accompanied the mental 
training of a girl at a fashionable boarding school. She 
was simply regarded as a mind into which were to be 
poured so much knowledge in French, music, embroidery, 
&c., and the elasticity of nature was subdued, that she 
might have deportment and ladylike manners. The sound 
mind in a sound body was to all intents ignored in her 
case. In ninetj'-nine cases in a hundred the tendency to 
fpinal distortion was given when the girl was under the 
discipline of a school for young ladies. 

It was perfectly natural that young ladies thus edu- 
cated to be attractive instead of useful should occupy 
with their toilet all those hours which are worth far more 
than gold, in adorning that part of the head which we call 
the outside, instead of the interior; and that many of the 
habits of their after life should become strange and un- 
natural. We can credit the story of a certain countess 
who replied to a friend that she thanked heaven for suf- 



lieiei)t fortitude to keep her griefs pent up in her own 
bosom. " But alas," she exclaimed, " Fido died a month 
ago, and yesterday morning as the clock struck two Adonis 
expired in my arms." ISTovv, Fido was a shock coated 
poodle full of fleas, and Adonis, when he graced the earth, 
a mangy little pug dog. Bat what was still more un- 
natural ; the twin children of the countess were at a 
country seat of the family, and at the breast of. a wet 
nurse. The mother had not seen them for six weeks. 
Although they were not lapdogs, let us at least hope they 
were baptized. In fact, this lapdog and poodle fantasie 
throws in the shade the sacred Ox Apis of the Egyptians, 
or the hallowed Cygnets of the Ganges. When a noble 
mother hugs closer to her bosom a puppy than she does 
her own babe, the wild Menomines who reckon the wolves 
as their cousins ; and the naked Delawares, who believed a 
•beaver to have been their grandfather, appear less irre- 
ligious than such a christian woman in robes of state with 
a coronet on her brow. Of the same character was the 
young lady in a sealskin sacque who was telling how fond 
she was of reading novels, and upon being asked if she 
had read "Ten Thousand a Year," replied: "Oh, la, I 
never read so many as that in all my life." She was 
probably a sister to the young gentleman in a stove-pipe 
hat and an Ulster overcoat, dangling to his heels, who 
when expatiating on his love of poetry, upon being 
asked his opinion of Byron'a Childe Harold, declared that 
he never knew Byron had a child by that name. 

The other sex were no better. Indeed, if anything, 
they were more indifferent. Mr. Herbert Spencer writes : 
" Consider the facts, and it will seem strange that, while 
the raising of first rate bullocks is an occupation on which 
men of education willingly bestow much time, inquiry 
and thought, the bringing up of fine human beings is an 
occupation tacitly voted unworthy of their attention." 
These observations are as applicable here as in England. 



Among onr affluent farmers 3-ou will find that they visit 
their barns and pigstyes, but never enter the nnrsery of 
their children to regulate its exercises or ventilation. 
What an absurdity! that while the father is cudgeling his 
brains over a prize essay upon the best food for his inferior 
animals, and the mother is, perhaps, playing the Alpine 
Chorus on a grand Stein way piano, the inheritors of their 
fortune and their lineaments are turned over to some 
one — it may be a nurse with a mouthful of decayed teeth, 
or perhaps a boarding school still more ignorant than 
themselves of what is due to the rising generation. This 
is all wrong; and Moliere's satire on the doctors who felt 
their patient's pulses with the handles of their canes, 
ridicules a practice, which, when compared with such 
treatment of children, seems reasonable and logical. 

Perhaps the reform method of teaching is more par- 
ticularly exhibited in its effort to impart information 
upon subjects which bear most vitally upon our personal 
welfare. It is a view expressed by Dr. Richardson that 
women are particularly fitted for the purposes of sanitary 
education; and he declares that the training for the 
proper performance of this function is really very simple; 
and that they can make themselves acquainted with the 
leading physiological facts bearing upon the proper treat- 
ment of the body during the educational period of life. 
All teachers and parents are deeply' interested in knowledge 
of this kind, and no system of normal instruction can be 
considered equal to the requirements of the age unless it 
affords sound knowledge of the general construction of 
the bod}', and of the physical laws upon which health de- 
pends. 

As we now view education, it is the process by which 
the capabilities of the human mind are led forth into the 
general sphere of activity. We regard it as the method 
by which the original endowment of thought is enlarged 
and more highly intellectualized by advancement in 



knowledge. It is therefore designed for the highest ele- 
vation of sentient beings. It should draw forth the 
faculties, training them intelligently, enriching them not 
only by an intercommunication of ideas, but by acquisitions 
which will be useful in all the circumstances of a busy 
life. This is a mighty task. It is an awakening of the 
mind. It requires something beyond mere dictation, 
something beyond a text book. Surely, if there is one 
profession more than another that requires a special prepa- 
ration, it is that of the teacher. A little knowledge in 
chemistry may be dangerous in a physician when his 
patients sutler from it ; and a little knowledge in miner- 
alogy may be bad for a man who loses a fortune by use- 
less experiments in excavating the earth for its metallic 
ores; and in such cases we promptl}^ acknowledge the 
necessity for a perfect professional training in those who 
practice them. There seems to be no reason why the 
same rule does not apply still more superlatively to that 
of teaching. It is not only to know science, but how 
best to teach it to others. If the physician had been 
better taught his patient would not have suffered. 
If the mineralogist had been properly instructed his 
employer might have made a fortune instead of losing 
one. A general knowledge of science is admirable, 
but in order to render it eftective there must be 
engrafted on it a special knowledge in some particular 
science. Hence we have the astronomer, the chemist ^ 
the artist, the engineer, and the machinist. So the 
teacher must not only have a just intelligence of things^ 
but he should be trained in the best methods which expe- 
rience has developed. It is strange that in a calling 
w^iich requires an accurate knowledge of all the studies 
embraced in our modern system of education — a knowl- 
edge at once accurate and extensive, and which also 
demands the exercise of qualities that are esteemed the 
best of our nature ; that is to say, a just and even temper^ 



a clear mind, constant sagacity, the sentiment of kind- 
ness, the utmost delicacy of taste and judgment, an end- 
less patience and a phj^sical strength and endurance, 
which would have made the teacher a valiant soldier ; I 
say it is strange that a profession which required for its 
successful practice so many and diverse qualities, should 
never have been deemed one of those which required a 
most diligent and careful preparation for its exercise. 

The Normal School is founded expressly to meet this 
exigency, and to maintain the highest intellectual level 
of the studies in our public schools. It has acquitted 
itself admirably of this task. Here the professors do not 
content themselves with giving instructions in matters of 
science, but the pupils are placed in the presence and at 
the head of a school improvised for the purpose, and they 
are taught in its management, and especially to compre- 
hend the actual work of teaching experimentally. They 
become masters of the work, and acquire a taste for it, 
and a habit of imparting knowledge to others in the best 
art of teaching. In a word, they take the part of the 
teacher, aud they have around them their fellow-pupils, who 
in their turn, each, assumes the role of teacher also. The 
old regime was teaching ex, cathedra. The word of the 
master was all that was known. It was the beginning 
and the end of all learning. But Normal teaching re- 
verses all this. It is the teacher himself who must be 
taught. His superiority makes him independent of mere 
routine, and he can perform his work with the ease and 
efficiency which always come from knowing how\ Every 
lesson is a recreation. The pupils learn a great deal out- 
side of the recitation. Like the traveller who tells of the 
distant seas and promontories he has passed, the strange 
lands and barbarous tribes he has visited, and the mighty 
cities filled with the works of art ; so the pupil under 
Normal instruction picks up a great deal of all sorts 
of knowledge as he passes along the course of study. 



10 

The elements of etymology, of history, grammar, botany, 
and on all the subjects related to his lessons. We learn 
more sometimes as we go along a road than we do at its 
end. 

The Normal school exists only for the elite among the 
scholars of the Girls' High School scrupulously selected 
upon impartial examination. They have, therefore, given 
evidence of ability and industry which indicate not only 
what they have accomplished, but that they are capable 
of still greater efforts before they are introduced into the 
bod}' of our public instructors. The institution exists. 
The elan is given to it. It has commenced to produce its 
fruits, and we are here to-night with flowers and smiles 
and other flattering testimonials of the favor in which it 
is held by the public. It ought to be perfected and ex- 
tended to both sexes, for it goes to the very foundation 
of the school system itself. The reform which imposed 
the necessity for its creation, is more manifest than ever. 
It is now fully organised, admirably disciplined and sus- 
tained by the ardent sympathies of every friend of the 
public school. No sensible man, I think, would arrest its 
progress, for nothing could be more fatal to the studies 
required by the present condition of society. It is evi- 
dent that a better system of teaching is now required 
than when reading, writing and cyphering constituted a 
popular education, and when the schoolmaster boarded 
round the neighborhood to eke out his miserable stipend. 
This answered the condition of the people. They dressed 
their bodies in homespun, but now they wear the finest 
fabrics. Why not improve the dress of the mind as well 
as that of the body? The change which time has brought 
into the habits of life infuses a corresponding change in 
the methods of instruction. The development of discov- 
ery, science and invention within the last fifty years, has 
prodigiously enlarged our knowledge, and it will not 
answer the necessities of modern life to learn only what 



11 

was tau<j:bt when there was less knowledge and less inven- 
tion in the world. The science wdiich teaches the arts 
that produce and sustain our material prosperity, cannot, 
under this chauije of circumstances, he of more import- 
ance than the cultivation of the mind, the love of study 
and the diffusion of knowledge ; for upon these depend 
the inappreciable blessings of social life and civilized 
humanity. Our children, I)y-and-by, will be the men and 
women of society, with the world before them and every 
controlling agency withdrawn from their conduct. Their 
welfare nmst, consequently, depend upon the knowledge 
and self-control they acquire duriiig the educational period 
of life. An overwhelming proportion of them will have 
to depend upon the public school for their education. 
From that school most of them will take away the intel- 
lectual baggage which they will carry with them through 
life. There is here no aim to make them professional 
scholars, but to give them enough information as will 
prepare them for the useful duties of life, and to rouse 
them to thinking, and to genei'ate in their mind a swarm 
of ideas, which will become iixed In' experience, as bees 
which try, but do not know where first to place their 
hive, but always end l)y j'ielding their tawn^'-colored 
honey. 

Indeed, the public school reaches to the foundations of 
the Republic. It presents to our eyes a melange of ages 
and conditions of sexes and tastes. The sons and daughters 
of the merchant, of the mechanic, of the professional man, 
of the laborer, and the otiiceholder, stand here upon the 
level of the same instruction. You behold the rich and 
the poor — -the latter not less assiduous nor less eager to 
learn than those of better fortune — they are all pupils by 
the same title, that of the people's children. There is no 
sweeter sight under the blue arch of heaven. An educa- 
tion common to them all, teaches the great lesson of the 
same right, and gratifies the spirit of equality which is 



12 

the most violent passion of our nature. Think of the 
millions of children subjected to this discipline, and who 
are here preparing for the active spheres of industrial and 
scientific pursuits which will hereafter employ their energies, 
and tell me whether the Republic which is the triumph of 
liberal ideas ought not necessarily to give the greatest 
force to the principle of the best education for those who 
shall, after the period of adolescence, control the adminis- 
tration of its public aflfairs, and select those who shall 
ordain and execute its laws ? 

The leading authors on educational matters agree in 
declaring that women have a natural aptitude for teaching. 
They bring into this work a grace, a buoyancy, and Jinesse 
that men do not always possess. Man is man and woman 
is woman, thank heaven that cannot be Aviped out ; and 
every man of any decency will at least admit equality in 
the difference, and the high social function to which par 
excellence woman is called, and where she can work with- 
out a rival, is now brought .into the work of teaching, and 
it is the grandest reform in education, both morall}' and 
socially that has ever been put into practice. It is of interest 
to the whole human family. Because it brings one-half 
of the race into the work of teaching for the elevation of 
the whole. Who can understand better than women the 
way to approach children ? Who can so well understand 
the temperaments so varied and so multiplied as those of 
youthful intelligence? She is a born teacher. She has 
the instinct of education. Look at her as a daughter, as 
a sister, as a wife, as a mother, and behold how attractive 
and sweet her influence, how incessant her abnegation, 
her self-sacrifice and devotion. Her sympathy captivates 
the love and confidence of a child, and she controls him 
without an effort, or at least by an effort that is pur- 
suasive rather than forcible. Rich in resources, ingenious 
in invention, she possesses every means of varying her 
action to all the springs and phases of the plastic soul of 



13 

the yonng. What she does not know, and perhaps cannot 
learn, she divines as if by inspiration, A child never 
wearies with a woman, because the woman never wearies 
with the child. All hail to our sisters ! Welcome, thrice 
welcome to this beautiful field of labor for which you are 
fitted by nature, and require less preparation than your 
brothers. 

If it be true that the interests of the country, and the 
welfare of mankind depend in a great measure on early 
impressions, and on a proper direction to be given to the 
mind of the young, I do not see why woman may not 
enter upon the work of education as a calling which 
agrees so peculiarly with her qualities and with her char- 
acter and tastes. The training required for the proper 
performance of this function is provided for in the Nor- 
mal School whose commencement we are celebrating. 
The object of the institution is the systematic training of 
3'oung women in the practice and art of teaching ; with 
a view of qualifying them to impart to others a good and 
careful education. This nohle institution is another step 
concerning the liberal education of women. There is nOw a 
marked tendency in public opinion in favor of their admis- 
vsion to every educational advantage enjoyed In' the other 
sex. In England colleges have been established for girls 
with college courses of study identically' the same as those 
pursued by j-oung men. The great universities of Oxford 
and Cambridge have provided for university education of 
women,' and the London University makes no distinction 
in sex in bestowing its degrees. Many of our own col- 
leges are taking the same course by admitting women on 
the same footing and to the same studies and classes. 
Of the twenty-six colleges in Illinois all but six admit 
young women on the same terms as young men. And 
there are many other schools of art, and of special science 
where both sexes are admitted without any other dis- 
crimination except qualification and capacity. This is 



14 

one of the profonndest movements in the social life of 
this day. If woman's ambition is not always of the most 
masculine order, her industry and aptness for study can 
no longer be denied. New motives for self-culture and 
a higher ideal of work and duty have been developed by 
these opportunities for acquiring knowledge, and every 
lady student deserves the individual charm which is con- 
ferred by the fate-imposed discipline of self-cultivation^ 
of self-denial ; and she has found the truth of Goethe's 
exclamation, '' he wlio has not wet his bread with tears, 
knows not the Gods." When properly educated, woman 
carries into ever}^ sphere of life — the domestic circle, the 
schoolroom or the social gathering — better views, higher 
tastes, nobler aspirations and deeper sympathies, she has 
a sweeter influence for truth, and a greater power for 
good upon the lives and characters of those she loves. 
The few women who have distinguished themselves, give 
the world assurance that a liberal education will do for 
them what it has accomplished for men whose genius 
has made them a world-wide reputation. 

Thougli fragile in form and unphilosopliical by nature, 
she can intuitively penetrate the social mystery, and by 
reading and reflection, she can form an intellectual sys- 
tem of her own, and clothe her efforts with every woman- 
ly instinct that adorns the sex. Let me instance Mrs. 
Somerville and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Jenny Lind, 
and that fair historian, Agnes Strickland, and onr own 
countrywomen, Mi's. liosmer and Elizabeth Thompson. 

Mrs. Somerville, who bequeathed a half million dollars 
for tiie production of books on science for young people ; 
Mrs. Browning, who is the queen of poetry ; the Casta 
Diva and Jenny Lind's charities ; Miss Strickland's 
Queens of the British Isles ; the Zenobia of Palmyra by 
Miss Hosmer, and the ceaseless beneficence of Mrs. Thomp- 
son, may serve to elucidate the faculties cultivated women 
possess to adorn the woi'ld and establish a fame which 
on earth we call immortal. 



^ "^ ' LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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